Maury Brown has a super-interesting post on Forbes that lists the local television ratings for each of the major league teams (except the Dodgers and Astros, which have cable-system-carrying issues). Unsurprisingly, if you look at raw viewer numbers, the Yankees are #1 with an average of 251,000 people watching each game. But given the size of the New York market, that places them merely in the middle of the pack when it comes to the average household rating. #2 in viewers and #1 in rating — to my surprise — is the Tigers, with 156,000 average viewers.

Some quick research tells me that there are only 7 people currently living in Detroit.

So that’s a lot.

Marlins, Angels, and White Sox fans may not want to bother checking out the link, although I’m guessing none of you are reading this either.

Baseball is pretty great. It’s a particularly great, from the spectator’s standpoint, because its ridiculous amount of luck allows even the most putrid of teams to win around a third of the time. And, because of those fixed outs every team must accrue, a loss never becomes a mathematical certainty, as those obnoxious people who keep retweeting the Indians’ 2001 comeback against the Mariners like to keep reminding me.

Still, there are certainly times, particularly when you’re cursed with an affiliation with the Padres, when a particular two-run deficit may seem insurmountable. And there are those late inning game states where the losing team would love nothing more than to run out the clock, but are bound by individual fiscal incentive to keep hurling themselves off the proverbial cliff. It’s grisly, like an ant that’s been stepped on but keeps crawling around.

How do we kindle the competitive flame in these expanses of tundra? I was struck with an idea when Friend of the Site and champion dramaturge Michael Clair threw this cry out into the void:

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The purpose of this weblog post is to inform that considerable portion of the readership who’d previously requested information regarding same, that tickets for the Italian Baseball Series of 2014 between Unipol Bologna and ASD Rimini, starting August 15th, are now available. The cost is €15 per game or €25 for the first and second games combined. Fans who are either 65-plus or a member of the military — which is to say, the Italian military — may purchase a reduced-price ticket for €12 (€20 combined for the first and second games).

Wipe your eyes, America. Pivot that chin up. Matt Harvey is pitching again.

You may hate your spouse, your kids may hate you, your career might be in the toilet. So what?

You think Matt Harvey lets that shit get to him? He used to be on top of the world. He was on top of the world, looking down on we filthy with his piercing eyes of judgement and compassion. Then Fate, Killer of Fun struck him down at the knees. Well, his elbow actually. But the elbow is basically the knee of the arm. Matt Harvey used to be the elbow of a nation. Then he was the teardrop of the Internet.

But look at this handsome fuck. He didn’t let it stop him. He’s riding fast — two middle fingers cocked and ready — all the way back. He’s taking his life back from Life. He has fate in a sleeper hold. He is moments away from sweeping the leg.

Leave your spouse. Quit your job. Start that novel or rehash that hobby or ask out that barista with the great legs and the pretty good face. Matt Harvey’s elbow has died for your sins. Is this how you wish to repay it? Winners never sulk, and sulkers can go walk into traffic.

Matt Harvey is pitching again. Let us all rejoice by creating better versions of ourselves.

(source)

TELEVISIONLAND — In a move that some industry experts have called “shocking, but then again, not really shocking at all, because when you think about it, it makes all the sense in the world, given that the world apparently contains just two cities in which major league baseball teams exist,” Big TV announced today that it has reached a multilateral agreement to broadcast Yankees-Red Sox games for “all eternity … and then some!”

“With this unprecedented agreement,” said one Big TV executive, “we have ensured that Yankees-Red Sox games – in their past, present and future incarnations – will be transmitted in perpetuity, without the spatiotemporal parameters that afflict otherwise similar broadcasts in the earthly realm.

“Indeed, thanks to this partnership,” she added, “Yankees-Red Sox games will never know the worldly transience of an Astros-Royals contest on cable channel 738, or the mundane boundaries of a Cubs-Dbacks game at Chase Field. To paraphrase a poet, we will slip the surly airwaves of Earth!”

Key to the blockbuster deal, insiders say, was the cooperation of God.
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I took images from a selection of spam emails and made baseball cards for them:

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The Jon Lester Trade: “First Yoenis Cespedes gets to leave Cuba, then he gets to leave Oakland. At this rate of quality-of-living advancement, he’ll be in Denmark by the end of the month, or at least Sweden. Some guys have all the luck. Although I mistyped his name as Ypenis before noticing and fixing it, so I guess he doesn’t have all the luck. But he has a lot of it.”

The Sam Fuld Trade: “Sam Fuld is awesome because he makes people like me think that if only we had a thousand times more talent than we do, we could be baseball players. I mean, most players seem like they’re a different species, but Sam Fuld just seems like an extra-awesome member of the same species. Though probably with fewer defects in his DNA.”

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FOX Sports Ohio has a fun article today, “Reds lethargic effort leaves Price perplexed.” I was initially confused about why David Price is thinking much about the Reds, since he isn’t even in the same league as they are, but then reading the article reminded me that Bryan Price is the manager of the Reds, so then it made more sense.

The article also made me wonder if there might have been a chemical agent released in the stadium causing mass mental confusion, since Price was “perplexed,” “two players forgot how many outs there were [and] [s]tarting pitcher Alfredo Simon didn’t cover first base on a ground ball to first baseman Brayan Pena.”

(In addition, mental issues are indicated by the fact that someone decided Brayan Pena was a first baseman, which is also confusing for someone with a .658 lifetime OPS.)

But my biggest takeaway from the article was this quote, near the end, from Todd Frazier:

“I guess you could say we were lethargic,” said third baseman Todd Frazier. “Maybe when (Chisenhall) hit that three-run homer it took the wind out of our sails a little bit, but I know we were battling. We were trying hard. Maybe it was not all there today.

“Games like this you’ve got to go back and the next day you’ve got to figure it out and work together as a hitting team. Together, as a team, our approach has to be better. Lethargic is probably a good word, but it’s just one of those games. We’ve got to come back and focus on getting back to that team game as hitters.”

Indeed, lethargic was a good enough word that they used it for the headline. Todd Frazier: Headline Writer. Nice work, Todd!

“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweetheart,” you answer, glancing up from FanGraphs.

“Daddy, what was 1990 like?”

You study her for a bit, searching her eyes for sarcasm. Is she old enough to have developed sarcasm by now? You’ve forgotten your Piaget, or at least the first chapter of Piaget your father-in-law gave you during your wife’s pregnancy. There was a timeline in there, a schedule for everything: vomiting, crawling, speaking, tying shoes, sarcasm, refusing to sit next to you in movie theaters. She seems sincere, looking up at you with those big brown eyes and that milk mustache. But she’s gotten good at being sincere, at looking earnest when she has to. You wish you knew how she did it, not because you want her to stop, but because you wish you could learn. You’ve raised her too well, and someday she’ll see what a fraud you are.

You sip your coffee, cold, and fold down the cover of your laptop. How could you explain? 1990 was Saturday morning soccer games on cold fall days, orange wedges and shin guards and swollen knees. It was walking home from the bus unsupervised, tiptoeing on curbs and avoiding cracks in the pavement. It was summer afternoons watching television shows you didn’t like because there were only ten channels, Dialing for Dollars, a nation’s temporary obsession with non-alcoholic beer, of Hypercolor shirts and Wayne’s World and Vanilla Ice, and unilateral American world power. It was the inability to look up answers to questions on the Internet, and a time when a list of pop culture references wasn’t a substitute for humor.

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I’ve heard of Jake Marisnick. But when I read Mike Podhorzer’s article this morning about speedsters available for the stretch run, I realized I had absolutely no idea what Jake Marisnick looks like. No picture in my head, at all. Maybe you don’t have a picture either. Hence, a brief quiz. Which one of these folks is Jake Marisnick?

(And, bonus: who are the rest of these guys?)